Magpie
by Guard of the Heradi
Summary: 'We are the future and we're here to stay'. How Johnny Storm met the girl of his dreams. Takes place in unspecified time after Silver Surfer and departs from canon, 'cos his love life in the comics was just a mess by all accounts. Features Own Character, and full Fantastic Four cameos from the beginning. Please read and review x
1. Chapter 1

**MAGPIE**

**PART I**

* * *

_We are the future and we're here to stay..._

* * *

Susan Richards nee Storm, also known as the Invisible Woman, also known as Mrs Fantastic sometimes now, shook her head at her brother. She'd always hoped that this day would come. She just hadn't expected to feel sorry for Johnny when it did.

"How did this happen, Johnny?"

Johnny Storm, also known as the Human Torch, fidgeted in his seat. "I was at this club -"

"Here we go," Ben - the Thing - interrupted, chuckling to himself at the lack of originality to Johnny's introduction. Of course he'd been in a club, where else? He stopped chuckling when flames suddenly shot into his face. "Hey!"

"Johnny!" Sue berated her brother. The younger Storm always liked getting on Ben's rock-hard yet sensitive nerves, but this was different. He was actually irritated himself.

Johnny sighed, and started again. "I was at this club, with these girls..."

* * *

A place called _Inferno_ was always going to get his attention. To Johnny's pleasure, the place lived up to its name: there were flames everywhere, at the doors, at the bar, licking at the dance floor. Everyone recognised him immediately - of course, how could they not? - and he was home from home. Hell, they had flaming Sambucas on offer. And, even better than that, the girls were _hot_.

The music was just getting going, relying on popular tunes dominating the charts in the US, and he had three girls - one blonde, one brunette, one redhead - swooning around him, in the tiniest dresses to be given the name hugging every curve, and every curve was swaying just for him -

* * *

"Alright, Johnny, we got the picture," his sister interrupted, arching an eyebrow. She didn't want to know about him grinding away with a bunch of bimboes. "They were hot. Get on with it."

* * *

Then the golden lights of the flames started turning blue. Out of the corner of his eye, Johnny saw the DJ high-five an approaching girl, let her plug her headphones into the bank of equipment set above the crowd, and started bouncing to the beat with her.

And then she faced them, faced him, and all he could think of was magpies. Of jet black and inky, turquoise blue, and the shiny things they steal.

He didn't think, until he retold the story now, how unlucky magpies were meant to be.

Either it was the gas-blue flames, but her black hair was streaked blue. Or, perhaps more accurately, her blue hair was streaked black, and danced around her headphones as her head tossed with the bass. Tiny hands fiddled with the settings before her, and sharp eyes surveyed the room, simultaneously claiming it as her new turf for the next hour, and judging whether they were warmed up enough. The previous DJ clapped her on the back as he stepped down, leaving her to wind down his tune.

She flexed her shoulders, adjusted the straps of her black vest top, shook her silver necklace and beads out of her cleavage. Compared to her predecessor, who'd been a quite tall, quite big guy, she was tiny, probably just under five and a half feet. Her bare forearm sported a tattoo of a phoenix aflame in flight. She was wearing jeans and sneakers, and when she danced, she danced with seemingly every inch of her body, not just her ass.

It was like gazing at a siren on the rocks, and Johnny was frozen at the sight of her.

* * *

"I remember that feeling," Johnny's brother-in-law, Mr Fantastic, pipped up, kissing his wife on her cheek as he handed over her morning coffee. She glowed with the compliment and the memory. Ben nodded his enormous head in blissful agreement.

Johnny glared at them all.

* * *

"Johnny?"

He blinked, bewildered, at his companions. They were staring at him incredulously, the only ones not dancing on a dance-floor of people on tenterhooks waiting for the next tune. Except him.

_Press play, fast forward  
__Non-stop, we have a beaten path before us  
It was all there, in plain sight  
Come on people, we have all seen the sights_

And his hands were starting to glow.

Startled by his own lack of control, Johnny fled like a frightened deer, leaving the girls behind to carry on once the shock had worn off.

His skin hissed under the cold tap in the mens', and as it returned to its normal pale complexion he splashed water on his face, slapping his cheeks, feeling the heat too much. He was Johnny Storm. Not some geek like Reed Richards, struck insensible when even a moderately attractive girl turned her gaze on him -

* * *

"Hey!" Reed protested. "I'm not that bad!"

Johnny just gave him a look as Ben started choking on his own laugh. Sue just kept quiet, a bemused expression on her face.

"Anyway," Johnny continued pointedly, not needing to refute Reed's objection.

* * *

By the time he'd gotten a grip of himself, the club was throbbing, the dance floor moving as one to the beat, like a heart thumping. Johnny got a drink, and watched from the edge.

DJ Magpie was good. Dipping and diving into tunes straight out of Ibiza, bringing out the beat and rhythm to get everyone moving, bringing out lyrics to be shouted back at her. All with a big grin, singing along too, bouncing in her sneakers with the rest of them, pounding out the bass as though she were conducting the orchestra of dancers below her podium, the blue flames pulsing behind her.

It was sexier than anything he'd ever seen. Sexier than the girls he'd been dancing with earlier with glistening cleavage threatening to pop out of their dresses, false eyelashes batting, unhealthy volumised or straightened or curled hair, and ridiculous heels pretending to make legs stretch forever.

_So we will never get back to  
To the old school  
To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound  
We are the newborn, the world knew all about us  
We are the future and we're here to stay..._

And then she caught him staring. Slowed to catch her breath, caught off guard. He held her stare for a second, and then looked away, to his drink. When he looked back up she'd turned back to her music, but her grin had diminished, been discomforted. He watched as she kicked in a new tune, tried to get caught up with it, but kept trying not to glance back at him to see if he was still staring.

Slowly she was back in her element. The dance floor was loving it, to the point where a couple of people were looking up, noticing her, cheering and clapping to her next choices, making her grin all the more. And then she started to round out her set by returning to the start.

_We've come a long way since that day  
__And we will never look back at the faded silhouette  
__We've come a long way since that day  
__And we will never look back, look back at the faded silhouette_

As the next DJ took over from her and she unplugged herself, letting her headphones rest around her neck like a bulky piece of jewellery, she looked out over the crowd, looked for him. Couldn't see him.

He didn't miss the flash of disappointment that swept over her face in full view of the club.

She went to the bar, waited patiently as the bartender ogled the view a trio of girls were giving him as they pressed up against the bar to order their drinks. Once done the bartender spotted her, and before she could make an order he clicked his fingers at someone else and shook out a cocktail, and placed a blue martini in front of her.

"From the Torch," the bartender told her with a sly grin, pointing down the bar. She blinked, startled again, when she saw Johnny grin back at her. She smiled back after a moment, uncertainly, but stayed where she was as he approached.

"Nice set," Johnny complimented, grinning cockily.

She raised an eyebrow. His reputation preceded him. So, was the compliment for her mixing, or her bust under her vest top? "Thanks," she replied, apprehensively. She didn't touch her drink.

He extended his hand courteously. "Johnny Storm," he introduced. "And you are?"

She smiled despite herself and shook his hand. "Azura Braith." His eyebrows raised at her exotic first name, and she chuckled to herself familiarly. "Just call me 'Zura, everyone does." She eyed his drink. "What are you drinking, Johnny?"

He raised his glass up against the light, shrugging. "Vodka on the rocks." He glanced at her untouched drink.

She suddenly grinned impulsively, and picked up her cocktail glass, took his glass out of his hand, placed hers in his hand instead, and downed his drink. She winced at the strength of it, and then tried not to laugh at his expression. "Never been a fan of Curaçao. Thanks for the drink."

And she left.

* * *

"Wise decision," Ben commented. "I like this girl already. Argh!" Flames licked at his chin again.

"So..." Reed drew out, his mug of coffee in his hands untouched this entire time. "Was that it?"

* * *

He watched as she walked away, cool as, and laughed, impressed. He downed her drink, grimacing at the Curaçao sweetness, left the glass and a tip on the bar, and followed her out, just in time to see her climb into a cab. So, before he thought of how it would seem, or how crazy it was, he darted forward and climbed in after her before the cab could pull away.

"You know, I think I've been dealt short," he began, as she shuffled as far away from him as she could.

"What the hell are you doing?!" She exclaimed, looking at him like he was mad.

"Normally when a guy gets a girl a drink they stand around and talk for a bit until either you get some more drinks or the guy realises the girl's not interested. All I got was a name, and that was it."

She frowned at him. "Err... okay..."

He studied her for a moment. "You don't get hit on very much, do you?"

Her face struggled not to change. "What makes you think that?"

"Because you clearly think that every word coming out of my mouth is a line."

She raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it?"

He shrugged playfully. "Might not be."

The eyebrow stayed raised. "You know that no girl has ever recounted that a single word that you have said to another woman wasn't a line to get her clothes off, right?"

He looked at her faux-aghast. Of course he knew his own reputation. It did him a great deal of favours. "Well, that's just...!" He composed himself, rising to the challenge. "I don't talk like that to every woman I come across -"

"Got some exceptions then?"

Then he struggled. He racked his brains for an example that wouldn't sound offensive. "Well, my sister for a start..."

Zura burst out laughing. "I hope so," she said, still laughing.

She had a great laugh. It just exploded out of her, simple and honest. Slowly she calmed down, but carried on grinning, forgetting for a moment that she thought he was just another player not worth her time or laughter. "Okay, okay." She smiled patiently, playing along. "Why did you jump in the cab?"

He shrugged honestly. "Like I said, when a guy buys a girl a drink -"

"- He wants a little more than just a name, yeah, I know." She shook her head, bemused at the inference.

"Something like that," Johnny didn't refute. Actually, for once he didn't care what happened, whether he got laid or not. He just really wanted to know why she'd dyed her hair blue, why she had a phoenix tattoo.

"Okay," she agreed. "Where do you want to go? And no," she started before he could smirk, "I'm not going back to yours, and you're not coming back to mine."

"Promise?" He teased.

She looked at him bluntly. "Yes."

He cocked his head to the side. "Okay, it's a deal." He thought for a moment, and then rerouted the cab driver. She suddenly grinned at some fleeting thought. "What?"

She chuckled gently. "It's a good thing you're a super-hero. Otherwise I'd be doing what Mom told me to do when a stranger gets into your cab."

He chuckled nervously. "What's that?"

"'Once in the nose, once in the nuts'..."

* * *

"Yep," Ben added to his earlier comments, "I definitely like this girl."

The side of Johnny's mouth twitched up. Yeah, so did he.

"So, where did you go?" Sue prompted, grinning. Her coffee was growing cold too.

* * *

"I think I'm going to have to tell you something."

Johnny waited, handed over her drink. This time something not blue, but red instead.

"If you try anything really cliché, like trying to teach me how to golf, Mom's rule about strangers in cabs applies then too." Johnny laughed, genuinely laughed. "Except I'm now armed with a golf club."

"Okay, sounds like a fair deal. As long as I get fair warning."

Technically, Pier 25's Miniature Golf Course was closed, given that it was past midnight, but... well... he was a member of the Fantastic Four. Naturally the security guard had opened up the course for him. All it cost was twenty bucks, and another twenty bucks for turning a blind eye to the bottles of beer and strawberry cider they'd snuck in.

"Well, I just told you something about me -"

"You've already told me about your Mom's rule," Johnny pointed out.

"No, that I don't like clichés," she corrected, grinning. "Tell me something."

"Like what?"

She looked around them and shrugged. "Why mini golf?"

* * *

"Good question," Reed pointed out, bemused.

Johnny shrugged defensively. "'Cos it's fun."

* * *

"Why, don't you like mini-golf?"

Zura grinned. "I have no strong feelings towards it, one way or another."

How cryptic. "Well, did you play mini golf as a kid?"

"Yeah, all the time, my big brother would take me."

"Did you have fun?"

She chuckled. "Every time."

"See, so did I. So..." Johnny gestured around them; 'hence, why we're here'. "My turn: why the blue hair?"

Zura ran her fingers through it self-consciously, shrugged. "'Cos I felt like it." She suddenly smirked. "I didn't feel like being a fake blonde, brunette or redhead... like those girls you were dancing with before."

He stared at her for a moment, amazed, and then burst out laughing. She had a sharper tongue than he'd expected. He also didn't expect her to own up that she'd noticed him too.

"Okay. Looks cool."

She turned to him, studied his expression for some sign that he was lying, that it was just a line. She found nothing of the sort, and so turned back to the game, took her shot. The ball wound through the circuit and circled the hole at the end, missed falling in. "Can I ask you about your powers?"

"Sure." He lined up his shot. "What do you wanna know?"

"How come you can fly too?"

The shot went wide. Very wide.

Zura blinked at his off aim. "Umm... was that the wrong question to ask?"

"No, just..." He scratched his head. Normally when people asked about his powers he got to show off. Not actually explain anything about them. "I err..." He shrugged at her. "I don't know." He then frowned. "I'm not exactly sure what you're asking."

She picked up his ball, handed it back to him so he could retake his shot, looking sheepish. "I mean... your friends, their powers make a kind of sense. Mr Fantastic is completely flexible, and so can fit into any nook and cranny he can find. The Thing is solid rock and so as strong as one. Your sister's powers mean she can both hide from and protect people. So what exactly is it about pyrotechnics than lends to aerodynamics?"

Johnny took his shot, this time not missing wildly, or missing at all, and just watched as the ball traversed the course. "I don't know." He told her honestly.

She nodded up at him, trying not to grin too much. "You don't care why either, do you?"

"Not much," he agreed, smiling innocently.

She chuckled. And shrugged. "Still pretty cool." And she went ahead to take her shot, leaving him to watch her from his frozen spot. He definitely couldn't disagree.

* * *

"Johnny," Ben butted in, chewing is toast, spraying crumbs across the breakfast table. He was the only one eating. "This is taking a bit long. _What_ happened?" Johnny looked down at his own coffee, swirled the contents of his mug thoughtfully. "I mean, you guys didn't just play golf, right?"

Sue and Reed, who'd looked at Ben a bit wide-eyed when he tried to fast forward through Johnny's recounting, turned back to Johnny, also wanting to find out.

Johnny smiled. "No, no we didn't." He gave up on the coffee. He was wide-awake anyway. "So, I was drinking beer, she was drinking girly strawberry cider. Turned out she's a bit of lightweight, so -"

"Please tell me you didn't take adva -" Sue began, suddenly horrified that her brother might have done something she really wasn't going to approve of.

"- so I suggested we get food to sober up. We got pizza..."

* * *

"Feel better?"

Zura moaned gently, picked up another margarita slice from the box and started chewing. Johnny, sober thanks to his own core heat burning off the alcohol in his body at a considerably faster rate than hers, thought it was actually alright pizza, for four AM in a tiny joint tucked away in Tribeca. The linoleum table needed a wipe down, after plenty of other drunk couples eating at it to sober up enough to go home, and he'd rather have gone home with the pizza, but... that seemed a bit forward, and wrong, given that Zura couldn't walk in a straight line anymore.

She peered at him grumpily. "How is it that you're fine?"

He smiled patiently. "Human Torch, remember? I'm hot, so the alcohol just burns up."

She glared at him. "Cheat."

He chuckled. "You didn't have to drink at my pace."

She grimaced. He had her there. "I was having fun..." she tried to explain.

He smiled genuinely. "That's good to know."

She smiled back at that. Then she groaned, clutching her head. "It's going to take forever to get back..."

"Back where?"

"I was meant to be staying with my Mom for a couple of nights, give her hand around the house now that Dad's gone, it was my brother's turn last week..."

"In Queens?" He had actually been paying attention during their Quid Pro Quo over Mini Golf. She knew that Sue had brought him up after his mother's accident and his father's unfortunate fate, he knew that her parents lived in Queens, but had actually brought her and her brother up in Lower Manhattan.

She nodded, groaned again. "Gonna fall asleep on the bus..."

It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "Stay at mine, I'll sleep on the couch."

* * *

"Don't look at me like that, Sue."

* * *

"Okay."

He had to take a moment to realise that she'd actually said yes, and then he sealed up the pizza box - still half full - and lead her gently out, thanking the Korean pizza chef, hailed another cab and made sure she didn't feel sick from the short journey to the Baxter Building. Oddly she looked better by the time she got out of the cab, having had the wind in her face from the open window, though the elevator ride turned her a little pale again. The whole time Johnny had either held her hand, or had his arm round her. He felt like a love-sick kid from school with his first crush, and, as pathetic as it was, he didn't care.

He led her to the kitchen, grinning at the wide-eyed look of awe on her face as he led her through the famous Fantastic Four headquarters. He poured her a glass of water, perched her up on one of the bar stools, played with the fingers of her free hand. On her last gulp, a drop dribbled down from the corner of her mouth, and he smiled and reached up to wipe it from her chin before she could. Stroked a stray hair back behind her ear. She leaned into his hand; it was warm, and caressing... it felt nice...

So he leant forward and kissed her.

* * *

"Oh Johnny..." Sue berated him, half endeared and half disappointed that he had taken advantage after all. The other two men at the breakfast table tried not to grin.

Johnny just smiled, in his own little world of remembrance.

* * *

She kissed him back. It was welcoming, un-intrusive, a moment just on its own. Just his and her lips pressed together solidly, her free hand in his hair, his hand still on her cheek.

He didn't remember a time when he'd kissed anyone like that. Kissing was for foreplay. So when they parted to breathe, though he didn't back away, just rested his forehead against hers, he didn't kiss her again.

"Johnny?"

"Hmm?"

Zura chewed her lip, uncertain. And then said it anyway. "You don't need to sleep on the couch." He pulled back enough to read her expression, but her head just fell on to his shoulder, her body becoming more and more limp. "But, not for... I'm too tired."

He smiled, nodded against the side of her head, pressed a kiss into her blue hair, and gently wrapped his arms round her middle to pick her up, letting her legs dangle like a rag doll, the floor still a distance from her feet, and lead the way slowly to his bedroom. He tucked one arm under her knees to lift her horizontally on to his bed, pulled her sneakers off, carefully took her jewelry off and placed it all on his bedside table, and slid under the sheets next to her, expecting her to roll away from his heat to the cool untouched feel of the mattress. But she didn't. She was already fast asleep.

He consciously forced his body to drop temperature, listened to the sound of her breathing steadily, peacefully. He didn't remember when he fell asleep, only that her face was the last thing he saw before he did.

* * *

"Wait a minute..." Ben's orange juice, freshly squeezed by literally squeezing some oranges, sat untouched, settled, the pulp floating at the top. "You mean to say you didn't... y'know... bang her?" Johnny shook his head. "Not even when you both woke up and she was sober? Nothing?"

Johnny blinked, flexed his jaw. "No, when I woke up she was gone already."

Understanding dawned on the three other members of the Fantastic Four. Then, more confusion. "Did she... leave a note?" Reed asked.

Johnny shook his head.

"Have you got her number?" Sue asked.

No.

"How do you not have her number?" Ben asked gruffly. "Sounds like you were pretty keen on her from the start, didn't you ask for it?" Again, no. "Why not?"

Johnny took a testy breath. "Because I've never asked a girl for her number with the actual intention of calling her. Numbers tend to come up as they're leaving, and I pretend to write them down so I don't look rude, okay?" He sighed, ignoring the looks on their faces. "I figured I'd ask to see her again in the morning, and swap numbers then, but she left without waking me up, so..." he trailed off, angry. "I thought she'd at least leave a note saying...I dunno, something."

"Something?" Sue gently prodded.

He shrugged. "I dunno, like, 'I had a nice time, call me' or something, I don't know."

Reed frowned. "You sure she didn't leave a note?"

Johnny glared at him. "This was two days ago. That morning I searched the whole building for something from her, and all I found was this..." He gently took her silver necklace out of his pocket, placed it out on the table. Hanging from the long chain was a tiny silver bird with victoria stone wings. "It fell off the table during the night, it was on the floor." He took a deep, impatient breath. "Yesterday I went back to _Inferno_ to see if she was DJ-ing again, or if I could get her number from the club, but the manager was a dick. Today I was going to go to Queens, see how many blue-haired girls there are, but..."

Silence fell over the table. "But... but what?" Ben voiced.

Johnny struggled with himself for a moment. "She thought I was a douche at first." The others frowned at him, lost. "I was just an asshole with cliché lines, not worth bothering to get to know until I dove into her cab, and even then she still thought that was all I was." He fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. "Sneaking out without a word is what I do when I don't want to see them again."

Again silence fell, again broken by Ben's shrewdness. "Why are you so hung up on this chick anyway?" Johnny looked up at him, his face tight. "You went on... well, essentially, one date in the middle of the night, she drank a bit too much, and you didn't sleep with her. You know, _that_ way. It's not like you know her -"

The force of Johnny's fire-shot was so brutal it knocked Ben off his chair, cracking the floor tiles as he landed roughly. "Johnny!" Sue exclaimed, shocked. She hadn't seen her brother this angry in a long while.

But she didn't need to hold him back. He collapsed back on to his chair. "I know more about her than I've ever known about the girls I've hooked up with." Ben picked himself up, seemingly to launch right back, but he was transfixed with the look on Johnny's face. "Her parents brought her up in Manhattan hoping she'd get into one of the private schools, which she did, but she didn't like the people, so she switched to be with her friends in Williamsburg. She works as a supervisor at a Barnes and Noble store somewhere in Manhattan, but she wouldn't tell me which one, so I couldn't surprise her at work..." He smiled weakly at that thought. That would have been nice. "She goes to street-dancing classes to keep fit. She got into DJ-ing after she and her friends started going out to Ibiza every summer; she made friends with a local DJ out there, and he taught her how to mix. Her parents divorced a few years ago, and she doesn't really see her Dad anymore. And she has a phoenix tattoo because her first and only boyfriend was a shit that didn't deserve her, and she got it done when he finally disappeared from her life... said she felt reborn, so it's there to remind her that if anything bad happens again, she'll rise from the ashes like she did before."

Sue placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. This girl really had got to him.

"It wasn't just that," he continued helplessly. "She asked me stuff too. I told her I'm more a Foo Fighters fan, not that I mind her stuff. I told her about growing up with you, Sue, about Mom, and Dad. I told her all the worst lines I have ever used that actually worked, and she found them all funny. Kinda more funny _at_ me than funny _with_ me, but whatever. I told her how cool it was to find out about our powers, and all the crazy shit we've done since. How much you hated your power, and then how you met Alicia," he gestured to Ben, "how your power is... well, it's just gross sometimes, the whole squished limbs thing," he made a face at Reed, who sighed stoically. "And how you stripped off on Brooklyn Bridge... no brother should have to pick up his sister's clothing - all of her clothing - off the floor... just... no." He shuddered, unable to look at Sue now, visibly fully-clothed.

Awkward silence lingered a bit too long.

"And the magpies?" Ben asked, purely curious. Sue and Reed looked at him like an idiot; not the most important question. Johnny however laughed. "Oh, she just likes the colour of them, has since she was a kid. Said more often than not she'd see them in pairs." He smiled at the simplicity of her answer. "She's just... she's just really cool. She's shy, you have to draw her out, but she knows what she likes, and she does the things she likes doing like she has every right to do them, every right to like them. She's just cool."

He suddenly frowned, like something very simple had suddenly dawned upon him, and he stood up. "Reed, do me a favour, would ya? Could you get me the quickest flight path for all the Barnes and Nobles stores in Manhattan? Would appreciate it, man." And, without waiting for a reply, marched out of the kitchen towards his room.

"Of course," Reed called out to him. The remaining three all glanced at each other, and then stared as Johnny walked out in his Fantastic Four suit. "I'll be in Queens if you need me." And then he flamed up, and shot through the open balcony doors.

Silence again. Then...

"He's gone and singed the carpet again."

* * *

At the end of the day Johnny came back from his search in Queens bearing no fruit. A lot of fans had come out and shook his hand, or lost their cool and screamed a lot, but no one seemed to know of Azura Braith. Not even having magpie blue hair helped; they just asked if she was Asian. Finally he found someone who seemed to know her mother, Ceará Braith, but unfortunately that someone was an old lady with dementia, and couldn't tell him where he'd find the Braiths.

Next day, using Reed's directions, he visited every Barnes and Noble store in Manhattan, and asked whether she worked there. Except each store took hours to get through, as customers and staff alike started asking for him to sign copies of the Fantastic Four biography that had come out recently. Naturally, the very last store, about to close, turned out to be the one.

"But I'm afraid she's on vacation."

And no amount of pleading, or promising to do an official book signing with all members of the Fantastic Four, would get what he needed: any contact details.

"I'm sorry, but we can't give out information like that, company policy, I'm really sorry..."

He was at a dead-end again.

He walked back from Barnes and Noble rather than fly, just to clear his head. After a while it started to rain, like a cliché from a movie. He was about to change his mind, but it meant it would be even more of a hassle to fly; wouldn't be able to see for the steam.

As he came in the lobby, drenched, steaming anyway from drying so quickly, he literally bumped into Willie Lumpkin, so in his own little world was he.

"Oh dear, you alright, Johnny boy? Yeah, you're alright, big lad like you isn't hurt by much, eh? Was just coming up to your floor to deliver, seems like a long time since you all just got bills and bad news. Now here, some of it's been sitting for a little while, fan mail and such - there's another dozen sacks out back too, but this stuff has 'urgent' on it - oh and there's some spam stuff there, if you don't want it, just chuck it; just a flyer for a night club tomorrow, figured you in particular might be interested anyway... everything alright?"

_Saturday Night at Bar With No Name  
Introduces  
DJ Crazy Eight  
Enclave  
DJ Yssa  
DJ Magpie  
..._

Scrawled along the side of the flyer, where it could come out as clearly as possible, was a cellphone number.

Willie Lumpkin's tidy parcel of mail went flying into the air as Johnny hugged him.

* * *

"So, did you call her?" Sue asked, grinning at her brother. He shook his head. Taken aback, she wasn't sure whether she wasn't seeing things. "You haven't?" He nodded. "Why not?"

He avoided meeting her eye. "It's been six days. Three day rule has passed."

There had been many occasions during their adult - if Johnny could really be described as adult, even today - lives when Sue just really wanted to slap him silly. This was one of those times.

"Are you going to go to this place then?" Reed asked, his eyes flickering up from whatever gizmo he was working on.

Johnny looked away from his own work - a new design for the Fantasticar; as good as Reed had built it, driving the damn thing was a chore not a pleasure, that was Johnny's area of expertise - and avoided looking at the others. "I don't know yet."

Ben looked at the others and then back at Johnny. "What do you mean, you don't know yet? You've spent most of the last week moping about this girl -"

"I haven't been moping!" Johnny objected.

"As good as!" Ben sustained. "You scoured Queens, went to every Barnes and Noble and signed autographs to try to get her number, and now that you have that number, now that it turns out she _did_ leave a message of sorts, you don't want to see her?" Johnny had nothing to say. "No, you know what? You're a coward -"

Johnny whirled around, his hands overheating noisily, his sister stepping in between them in case Johnny lit up the lab.

Reed put his screwdriver down, about to earn his 'grandfather streaks'. "Ben, what's the most romantic thing you've ever done?"

The rock-man started, distracted, looked over at his friend. "Eh?"

"What's the most romantic thing you've ever done? Doesn't matter who it was for."

Ben thought for a second. "Well, I took Alicia to the zoo once, got her to pet lion cubs for an hour with a vet. I've already got her engagement ring on order, no stones or anything 'cos she can't see them. It's got our names in Braille on both sides, so she can feel them. And I got you to check that everything... err... well, you know."

Johnny's eyebrows disappeared up his forehead, putting two and two together; the uncomfortable looks on both men's faces said it all. Then it was Reed's turn to confess.

"Well, I'm not very good in that department, but... we both bribed the projectionist at the Hayden Planetarium to keep the stars above our heads, because we didn't want our date to end. We planned _five_ weddings, because we were so determined to get married. One is stressful enough to try to organise. And... what was it that I said at the airport?" Reed turned to his wife, less asking for her to remember for him, but for just the sight of her to remind him. "I told you, 'this is going to be wedding you always dreamed about, and I'm not going to let anything get in the way of that. Not even the mysterious transformation of matter at the subatomic level'."

Sue smiled, remembering it only too fondly. "And I told you it was the most romantic thing you'd ever said to me."

Johnny frowned. "Okay, I get his point," he gestured to Ben, "but I recall saying how pathetic that was..." he gestured back to his sister and brother-in-law.

Reed visibly swallowed his pride, and continued. "Well, you were right." They all cast confused looks at him. "I should have done more romantic stuff, said more romantic stuff than that. More than just persevering with the bumps along the road. I haven't gotten you sunflowers in... I can't remember how long." Sue approached her husband, trying to find the words to say that she didn't really need flowers... but she couldn't disagree that it would have been nice. Would be nice. "And I figured that out from you!" Reed pointed right at Johnny, even extended his arm so his finger was only a few inches away from Johnny's chest. "You searched an entire New York City borough for a girl that you took out on - what can only be described as - a first date within an hour of meeting her."

"You out-romantiked the both of us," Ben concluded, sounding both proud and amused.

Johnny looked at the two men, looked at his sister, and felt even more sick to the stomach. They all looked so encouraging, so proud that he was doing the grown-up thing and naturally succumbing to monogamy. They also seemed to think it was really funny. He couldn't have thought of anything less funny right now. This just... well, it hurt. Put simply.

"I need to think," he excused, and disappeared. A few moments later they heard the roar of the flames as he lit up and flew as fast away from his thoughts and feelings as he could.

Which of course, was never going to be fast enough.

* * *

"I'm not sure that this is such a good idea, after all."

"Sue, you're the only one of us that can do it."

"That doesn't mean it's a good idea! Just a better idea than sending you or Ben!"

The Bar With No Name turned out to be, to Sue's surprise, a party in a giant warehouse. Everything was metal and the speakers around the warehouse were enormous, which meant the bass was incredible. Her heart was pounding in her chest with it, and she wasn't intoxicated - one way or another - like the rest of the crowd. Their intoxication was helping her though; no one had seemed to notice the gap among the jostlers, where she stood in her skin-suit, unseen. Then again, in the near pitch-black of the warehouse, she could barely see the people around her, let alone herself if she became visible again. She was tempted to create a force field around herself, just to stave off the claustrophobia of it.

And she was at the back.

She was struggling to see each DJ, raised on a platform several feet above the crowd, accessible via a dodgy-looking, rusty bridge. But, so far, no girl with blue hair. Though again, whether Sue would notice her hair colour was another matter.

If her brother was here, she had barely any way of telling, being too short to see over the crowd. Hence, why she didn't think that this was such a good idea. In fact, maybe Reed and Ben would have had better luck. Reed could have stretched to see over the crowd, fitted through any gaps between people. Ben could have just barged through.

Except, if Johnny was here, then they'd all be in trouble. At least he wouldn't see Sue.

Someone barged into her, pushed by an over-zealous raver, and she grunted her frustration at the situation she'd found herself caught up in. She projected out a field, pushing through just enough space to get through to one of the shorter 'VIP' podiums, and climbed up the rigging. Finally, a view. Even a seat of sorts, albeit a narrow and rusty one.

Goodness knows why she wanted to come in the first place. Whilst she drowned out what she could only describe as 'noise', she played with the laser lights scissoring through the warehouse, distorting the straight lines. This type of music really wasn't for her; she preferred music that didn't feel like it was physically jumbling your innards.

She swore she saw something...

She looked upwards, towards the ceiling, where the skylights for cranes once upon a time ago let the night sky twinkle invitingly above. Oh to be outside, away from the coffin of bass and out in the air. But it wasn't stars she'd seen twinkling. More like a fiery shooting star.

* * *

He still wasn't sure whether this was a good idea. But it was the _only_ idea that was going through his head. In the absence of other ideas, do.

Unlike his sister, Johnny did know what _The Bar With No Name_ was, that it wasn't a bar in the slightest, which made the name all the more meaningless. It was one of the largest raver locations in New York City. To DJ here was an honour; it meant hardcore party fans were listening. The organisers had one rule: no original work, just remixes. It wasn't particularly obscure, or experimental, or 'out there'. It prided itself on being the biggest underground party in the state. Everyone here liked tunes, and wanted to move to them. Most likely in a state as far away from sobriety as could be achieved within the individual's own limits. Some of course, sadly, would go beyond that. Pity, what a waste of good music. What was the point of being unable to hear what you were meant to listen to?

Whatever Johnny's thoughts on the limits of hedonism in its chemical forms, they were just distraction to the rest of his thoughts. Much needed distraction, in his opinion, but distraction nonetheless.

Then it rang straight through those distractions.

_Press play, fast forward  
Non-stop, we have a beaten path before us  
It was all there, in plain sight  
Come on people, we have all seen the sights_

There was his magpie.

He shook his head of the thought. _His_ magpie? He gripped the edges of the skylight tighter, felt the throb of the last tune die away in the metal, until all there was was Zura's fine-tuned Avicii.

Some people just have a tune. They identify with it, the lyrics and the sound together, put a stamp of ownership on it that has nothing to do with copyright. This was Zura's. When the cider had pushed her into the realms of tipsy, and they were on their third game of Mini Golf, pretending to care who won two-to-one to the point they were full-out cheating, she'd gotten her iPod out, put it on full blast - which for an iPod on its own isn't that loud - but loud enough that they'd been able to laugh and dance, badly, as only a Mini Golf course can demand. But this same song had come on, and she'd sung to the lyrics, quietly at first, and then as if she was the only one there. It had pulled out a tiny glimmer of extraversion in her, that small thread of her that liked to be as loud and as brass as he was.

With her bright hair flying, cheeks pinked with the night chill and the cider, on the verge of being described as wobbly with the same, she'd looked... there wasn't a word that Johnny knew of to properly describe her. Somewhere between extraordinary and ordinary, between cool and geeky. 'Alive' was as close a word as he could think of. Something told him he'd be disappointed if he could come up with a single word that encapsulated everything he liked about Zura in the few hours he'd met her. Having a single word, or even a collection of words, would make it all sound mediocre. He liked not being able to put his thumb on it.

_So we will never get back to  
To the old school  
To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound  
We are the newborn, the world knew all about us  
We are the future and we're here to stay..._

She stretched out the instrumental before the chorus, echoing the last lyrics through the warehouse, raised her arms as though to feel the music vibrate through the air above her, lifted her head skyward...

And froze.

* * *

_We are the future and we're here to stay..._

Sue couldn't help but be surprised by her brother. He'd shown both unusual and exceedingly good taste simultaneously. Normally he showed neither.

If the DJ raising her arms to the sky as though she were lifting sound itself was Azura, DJ Magpie herself, Sue couldn't help but approve, if with a little surprise. The hair knocked her off-kilter with convention completely, as did the tattoo, which, for a tattoo, was relatively conservative in its size and design. Sue had pictured something enormous and gothic, or the reverse, tiny and cute. There was a light gothic element to the girl, from her casual black denim shorts, sneakers and lace white top, silver and beads entangled in her bracelets, neck almost pointedly undecorated, missing her necklace. And she was tiny in that she was short, but she was curvy, her bones concealed, but clearly kept in shape from the street-dancing classes she'd told Johnny about. It made her curves look more in proportion, like she was meant to be the shape she was, and when she'd bounced to the music it had been lightly, with no excess weighing or slowing her down.

She looked like she was having fun. She had a nice, happy smile. She also looked - and Sue did find this important - sober. In control entirely of her body and its movements. Every sway of her hips was intended, a natural response of her brain enjoying what it was listening to.

Sue looked skyward as DJ Magpie stopped moving entirely, seemingly shocked still by the stars. Remembering the flaming streak, Sue had a very good idea what it was, and smiled.

"He's here! I think she's seen him!" She yelled over the music into her mic.

"What's happening?"

"Is she hot?"

"He hasn't messed up by doing pyro-tricks yet, has he?"

"Is she hot?"

Sue rolled her eyes. Two grown men, reduced to middle school girls peeping round a fence during recess. "Nothing, she'd doing her... she's DJ-ing. He's on the roof. Just wait..."

"Sue?"

"Yes, Ben?"

"Is she hot, or has Johnny lost his sense of taste along with his sense period?"

Sue rolled her eyes again. "She's hot, Ben."

That silenced the boys. For a moment. "We should have given you a camera."

* * *

_We've come a long way since that day  
__And we will never look back at the faded silhouette  
__We've come a long way since that day  
__And we will never look back, look back at the faded silhouette_

The sound dropped out before the chorus, and blasted out again, bass rewarding those who'd fallen with the drop, the piano belting it out to equalise. The crowd cheered and bounced as one, like an actual sea of heads, waves crashing in all directions, spray from the odd head falling out of sync. Zura missed seeing all of it, still staring above.

The star and moonlight lit up her face perfectly, concealing no secrets with shadows. Johnny, looking down, could see every second of shock, every moment of joy, every minute of trepidation. Against the dark of the night, she couldn't see his face, which seemed unfair, but she did see what he did.

He raised his hand, clicked his fingers, and waved the tiny flame that sprung from his thumb, no different from a candle-light, expanded it and controlled it to keep its shape. Waved it like a Zippo lighter at a concert.

She grinned at the flame, looked back down at the crowd, and led them into the next tune, bounced along with them, put weight on, lightened the sound, stretched out one melody and then the next. Sections would curl up, ready to pounce, until the warehouse would explode with bass, then explode again with silence, start again. Zura had the prize view to see the heaviness weigh on the mass, then rise with lightness, tremble with anticipation, but Johnny had maybe an even more incredible view: he got to see her too, all sense of self-consciousness gone, just another exposed nerve of the creature called an audience in front of her. It was almost immediately addictive, at a primal level, to melt into it. He could see why she loved it, but from her podium.

Her set was only an hour, and Johnny couldn't believe it when that hour started to wind up. She checked her watch, and got ready to loop up her circle.

_Straight ahead on the path we have before us  
__Day by day, soon the change will come  
__Don't you know we took a big step forward  
__Just lead the way and we pull the trigger_

She started removing her additional elements, bringing it back to the original, to the familiar, strengthening the piano and the echo of the drums until it was almost acoustical. The next DJ scrambled across the bridge to take over, and was met with a serener girl than had cross the bridge herself.

_Now we will never get back to  
__To the old school  
__To the old grounds, it's all about the newfound  
__We are the newborn, the world knew all about us  
__We are the future and we're here to stay..._

By the time she started crossing the bridge back, the mass was yelling every word back, louder than the speakers themselves could have handled. Like the mass had finally found a voice of mass-expression.

_We've come a long way since that day  
And we will never look back at the faded silhouette  
We've come a long way since that day... that day... that day... that day..._

The Torch stood from his perch up high, lit up, and circled slowly round the building, landing at the side exit. He stared at his hands, still aflame, for a moment, wondering whether to stay as he was. Then he shook his head. If he wanted to show off to her, then this wouldn't work. This was the girl who asked why he could fly, not one of the many girls who'd just gone 'wow'.

"Hey, Johnny."

He turned, and realised that he was still on fire. Cursing under his breath, he extinguished himself, stood feeling sheepish in front of Zura. She was clutching herself, trembling a bit, eyes wide and bright.

"Are you okay?"

She chuckled, still running on adrenaline. "Yeah, just... still buzzing from it." She took a deep breath. "That was my biggest gig ever. I can't believe it went that well..." But she was grinning too much.

"Yeah you do," he teased, smiling. She laughed, not going to refute him. In this, there was no question of doubt or even confidence. She'd go out and enjoy it anyway. The upside was if the rest enjoyed it too.

He handed her back her necklace, the magpie at the end of the chain spinning. "I think this belongs to you."

She took it, her fingers brushing his. "Thanks..." She fiddled with the silver and blue bird in her hand, didn't put it back on. "Thank you for coming." She toed a piece of scrap metal on the ground with her sneakered foot. "I didn't know if you'd come, whether you got my flyer."

"Yeah..." Well, this was awkward. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't -"

"I'm sorry I ran out on you." She got in first, adrenaline fuelling past her nervousness whilst it was still pumping round her veins. "I tried to leave a note, but the only paper I could find was Dr Richard's notes and stuff, and I couldn't figure out what was important or not. Mom called while you were asleep. I had to pretend I was at home, she wanted to know what I wanted for breakfast." She smiled awkwardly. "Figured I'd save telling her that I slept at the Human Torch's apartment for another time, when I wasn't hungover. Can't say I knew what to write anyway, it would have just sounded... I don't know, weird I guess. Notes on pillows are always too soppy or full of white lies, I didn't want either. Then when I finally got hold of my spare flyer, I still didn't know what to write... and I was too shy to just deliver it in person, so I stuck it in your post box."

"When was that?"

She shrugged, embarrassed. "The same day, after I'd got back to mine and was on my way to Mom's. Why?"

He started laughing. "I only got it yesterday." Her eyes widened. "We get a lot of mail, our post guy thought it was spam." She stared at him for a second, and then started laughing too, with relief, biting her lip as she calmed, realising how close they had come to not meeting here. And started shivering properly. "Cold?"

She nodded reluctantly, and was at a loss of how to react as he stepped closer, till he was an arm's width away, and turned up the heat through his skin-tight suit. She felt it instantly, like a radiator suddenly become far more efficient, and smiled. "Thanks."

He shrugged. It wasn't that big a deal. "I was going to say I'm sorry I didn't call."

She looked surprised, touched even. "That's okay. You didn't have my number."

"Yeah, but I didn't call when I did." He fidgeted uncomfortably. "I actually tried to get it, without going as far as asking Reed to hack your phone or something..."

Zura frowned. "Can he do that?"

Johnny froze for a second, considered. "Good question, I have no idea actually." She smiled, bemused. "But I went back to _Inferno_ and asked the manager. He's an ass, by the way." She nodded, patiently, then nodded honestly, in agreement. "And then I flew to Queens to see if I could find you, or someone who knew you, or where your Mom lives."

She stared at him, shocked. "But... Queens isn't a small place..."

"Yeah, I know," he agreed. "Guess I looked in all the wrong places though, 'cos there was just this old lady who knew your Mom, but she wasn't all there... she was wearing a tea cosy for a hat; not a hat that looks like a tea cosy, an actual tea cosy."

"Oh, Mrs Lee..." Zura said, recognising her. Then something occurred to her. "Oh... she did say someone came and asked for Mom... said he looked like a Devil's angel... Mom did wonder what she was talking about..."

Johnny chuckled with her. "And then I tried every Barnes and Noble in Manhattan, but your boss said you were on vacation, and she wouldn't give me your number either." He took a deep breath. Oh God, he sounded like a stalker. "Honestly, what did she think I was going to do with it? I'm in the Fantastic Four."

Zura pulled a face. "Umm... no offence, but you're the Human Torch. And she reads People magazine religiously. She probably thought she was protecting me from being in next week's issue."

And the weight returned. And made him say stupid things. "Well, doesn't matter, 'cos I still didn't call when I did get your nu -"

She stepped forward and silenced him with a finger over his lips. "Quit while you're ahead," she advised quietly. She removed her finger from his lips, let her hand drop to her side. "You really searched Queens, and asked at every Barnes and Noble for me?" He nodded sheepishly. She grinned, shrugging. "I'll take you being here to tell me that over you calling me."

He smiled back her, ran the tips of his fingers down her arm. Her skin felt like she'd been wrapped in a warm towel, soft and comforting.

He hadn't felt soft and comforting since he was kid, when Mom was alive, when he and his sister were still young enough to be comforted so easily. And it read all over his face.

"You really are nervous, aren't you?" Zura said gently, and her hand grabbed his before he could retract it from her arm, before he could back away. "Always far too many steps ahead." He frowned at her, not understanding. "Look, I had a really great time with you, so this is what I want to do: I want to swap numbers, go back to Manhattan with you, do something fun, go to a party or something. If it sucks, then that's too bad. But I don't think it will, and I don't think that you think it will either. And then we can figure out if we want to meet up again. That's it. Wanna do that?"

He stared at her, disbelieving. Surely dating wasn't that simple... was it? Then he started chuckling to himself. Why couldn't it be? Wasn't that what he wanted anyway, to just carry on having a great time with her? "Yeah, okay, we can do that."

She smiled, happy. Then she started chuckling teasingly. "You're actually alright, y'know that?"

He raised an eyebrow, and stared at exactly what he wanted right now. "Quit while you're ahead," and leaned down as she leaned up.

It had never felt this good, kissing a girl.

* * *

Sue resisted the urge to pump the area and go 'WOO' at the top of her voice. Finally, her brother actually looked genuinely happy.

She watched the two for a moment, and turned away to give Johnny some privacy. The tension that had built in his body for the last week was gone, his arms round her waist, practically lifting her off her toes, as she held on to his shoulders. Both their faces looked serene, their kiss building the way good kisses do, when one takes the hint from the other to use less tongue, to stop nibbling, to stop being so passive. She and Reed kissed like that, except when she was invisible and he got her nose instead.

After a minute, the two drew apart, grinned at something he said, and he lead the way past Sue, brushing dangerously close to where she was hiding. After they were gone, the radio crackled.

"So, what's happening?" Two twelve-year old girls asked from the Baxter Building.

Sue grinned. "He did it!"

The two grown men both cheered like their favourite football team had just won the season, making Sue laugh. "Alright, I'm coming home, will fill you in on what little I saw and heard. Think you can last until then?" She got no more response out of them, both still cheering over the fact that they didn't need to put up with moody, love-sick Johnny.

She headed back to the Fantasticar, jumped in. And realised what was wrong. The front section - with its gleaming, slick nose that Johnny had redesigned to be a two-seater - was missing.

Sue sighed, looked up as she heard her brother whoop from the glide and speed of his acquired ride, heard Zura scream and laugh with the thrill of flying. When she imagined her younger brother finally dating, she hadn't imagined that he'd steal half the car to impress his girlfriend.

* * *

_We've come a long way since that day  
And we'll never look back at the faded silhouette  
__We've come a long way since that day  
And we'll never look back, look back at the faded silhouette._

* * *

**AUTHOR'S DISCLAIMER: Firstly, the Fantastic Four belong to Marvel and 20th Century Fox, so the only payment I get for writing this is merely the enjoyment of doing so, which will do just fine.**

**Secondly, the lyrics of Silhouette are by and belong to Avicii, featuring Salem Al Fakir. At first, the lyrics didn't mean too much to the story, I just put it on as background to write to, and then after repeated listenings, they became more and more pertinent. I've found that I interpret them in different ways within the context of the story; as a promise of their happy ending beyond the story ('**_We've come a long way since that day_**'), or as a remark over how these two characters have changed before they get to this point (Johnny takes on more responsibility in the sequel, and slowly begins to understand the value of having a partner to take comfort from, and Azura's deliberately only mentioned past that inspired her to get a phoenix tattoo). Either way, it became nicely fitting.**

**This is only the first of two parts. I don't like leaving the proverbial 'and then they lived happily ever after', I prefer trying to describe exactly what that entails, so that's what you're getting in Part II.**

**Anyway, hope you've enjoyed reading this, please review! Take care all x**


	2. Chapter 2

**MAGPIE**

**PART II**

* * *

_Press play..._

* * *

Ben, who'd been so keen to judge for himself whether Azura was hot, had the honour of being the first to do so a couple of weeks after that night at _The Bar With No Name_. He was woken up in the middle of the night by the one thing that usually woke him up irritatingly in the middle of the night: Johnny making a racket as he got home from a night out. As usual, he wasn't alone, and his female companion kept trying to shush him, but was almost just as loud as Johnny was being just stomping around the penthouse, simply by giggling. So Ben got out of bed, ignoring the creak of the heavy duty frame, and went out to tell Johnny to shut the hell up.

He was silenced by the sight of Johnny also being silenced quickly by a tiny girl with blue hair kissing him passionately, and, without even drawing away for breath, Johnny led the way to his bedroom, and shut the door behind them. Leaving Ben, wide-eyed, in the hallway. He then made a face of approval, and went back to sleep.

Despite the noisy homecoming that night (and many nights after), for someone who lived so publicly, who liked to shout his exploits from the rooftops to the eager crowds and TV crew below, Johnny became almost worryingly private. When asked how things were going by any of the other members of Fantastic Four, he'd say 'fine' or 'great', grin, and leave. But they knew it was going well, from the number of times they'd seen Zura at the penthouse, wearing Johnny's shirts as he applied aloe to fresh burns, pretending to be mad at him whilst trying not to giggle because she was ticklish.

* * *

_It was all there, in plain sight..._

* * *

The media lapped it up as they always did, printing fuzzy phone camera shots of the two making out at parties or in clubs, and every time he addressed the TV crews to boast about the latest feat of heroics that he'd just performed, he got 'who's the girl?' again and again. He'd just ignore it, grinning as usual, and walk away when he was done talking. The next time he called the press parasites, he actually started to mean it. Particularly when they asked Zura, where they found her, 'is it true that you're dating Johnny Storm? Where did you meet? Is it true he has an extinguisher by his bed?' Unlike Johnny, who turned and teased the press with misdirection, she did her best to ignore them, and said absolutely nothing. Sometimes after she laughed about it. Other times, times that became more and more frequent as the weeks went by, that she didn't really find it very funny.

"I got asked today whether we're still dating because I like pyrotechnics in the bedroom," she told him once, finally losing it. "_What?!_" She said it much like Johnny did when explaining, for the first time, the extent of his first demonstration of his new abilities to Sue and Reed at Von Doom's medical facility in the mountains. Except that time he'd been ecstatic. She was fuming.

By some miracle it took two months before her name got leaked, by which point the pictures weren't fuzzy, but just professional shots of the two walking down the block together to pick up Chinese take out. Inevitably that's when it all got even harder. She stuck out her job at Barnes and Noble for another month, trying to put up with fans asking inappropriate questions instead of asking for books, or jealous girls wanting to check out who the Human Torch had lasted more than a week with. It was when the jealous girls turned into jealous exes that she reluctantly quit her job. It wasn't everything to her, it was just a job at the end of the day. But she had friends there, a team of girls who felt more like sisters, who had supported her by keeping their mouths shut about who she was seeing to the press, but gathered around the staffroom table to gossip like she was no different from them, and he was no different to any other boy that one of their group had started dating. That night she went home to her apartment, ignored Johnny's calls, and cried.

It became the first bump, the first thing they fought about. She couldn't help it, but she blamed him for the things that she was losing from her life so quickly, like her privacy, her income now even. Offering to support her whilst she figured out what she was going to do next just made things worse. What in the world could she do now that she was famous for being the girl that lasted in the Human Torch's bed? But when Johnny flamed up to fly out, to walk away from their argument, she grabbed his hand, burning herself badly in the process, and asked him to stay rather than run away. It shocked him, amazed him, that she was prepared to grab him when he was fully aflame, just to carry on arguing. They didn't though; he extinguished himself, landed back on the floor, and took her to her bathroom to put her hand under the cold tap, let her dig her fingernails into his arm as the water stung. The pain sparked fresh tears, and he held her, rocking her soothingly, apologising quietly into her ear for hurting her.

He told her this was why he hesitated instead of calling her, when they first met. He already had an inkling of how difficult it would be to seriously date someone who was normal, who was unused to and didn't crave the spotlight of the media. He knew how difficult it would be for her having her life trampled over by TV crews and overly enthusiastic fans, and how difficult it would be for him to do normal things with her, like take her out on a proper date, to the movies or to dinner. But then he'd hoped to whatever God there was that a) it would be worth it, and b) that he could make it work. And he said he was sorry, again, that so far he hadn't done b), even though he'd been right about a).

She wiped her tears away. "Now that was a line," she hiccoughed. And then she asked him to stay again.

She didn't know this, and he didn't tell her then, but that night marked the first time he apologised that much to anyone. He didn't apologise to his own sister like that.

So he stayed, and whilst she slept in the next morning - one of the luxuries of not having a job to wake up early for - he made a statement to the TV crew outside her apartment block: he was no fan of any 'fan' who harassed his girlfriend, and any reporter caught trailing her would learn first hand what 'pants on fire' felt like. Because "I'm a jealous boyfriend, it turns out, and I'm the only one who should be paying her _that_ much attention."

* * *

_We have all seen the signs..._

* * *

It wasn't all bad, having the publicity; DJ Magpie took off like a storm, and got busy. Zura got regular bookings at Manhattan's biggest venues, and increasingly decent quotes from some of the most renown event organisers. As the media stopped calling her the girl Johnny Storm was dating and started calling her his girlfriend, her value went up all the more. It stung a little that it was because of Johnny's name rather than her talent, but then she'd actually go and perform, see everyone have a good time, and she cared a little less. Slowly, it became less Johnny's name and more about DJ Magpie.

Meanwhile, he stocked up on aloe, she cut her hair shorter after he singed it, and Johnny became a rare sight around the Baxter Building; he was either out saving the city, or he was taking her out before her sets, to laser tag, paint balling, or teaching her how to drive the Fantasticar so they could have races over the Long Island Sound. Instead of going to the theatre they got DVDs and popcorn for Johnny to cook up. Instead of going out for dinner they had picnics in the Fantasticar, parked into hover mode over the Hudson to watch lit up ferries shuttle to Ellis Island. He was either the Human Torch, or he was with her, or on the phone to her.

Whilst the jealous fans and exes left her alone, in fear of the Human Torch's wrath, they didn't leave him alone, which became the next thing they should have argued about. No woman wants to put up with her boyfriend being hit on by the female population of New York City night and day, no matter how good a boyfriend he was to her. Zura had known before that it was going to be a very weird time, dating one of New York's biggest players, the only bachelor left from the Fantastic Four, but she hadn't known how futile it would make things feel to her. Lapping up the attention he got was just what Johnny did, it was what he enjoyed doing. The only consolation was that he always went home with her. But it was a horrible feeling, watching as she did her set, trying to get swept up in the music, as her boyfriend danced with the hottest women in the club beneath her. But she never got the guts together to tell him how much she hated it. It didn't even seem fair. He never went out and sought it anymore, they would just flock to him like moths to the light. He'd never had to shake them off before, so he had no idea how to, or he used her as a shield. That was nice, sometimes, being claimed in front of these silly girls, and claiming him, by just holding his hand or kissing him. But the moment she stepped away, the pouting moths would flutter back.

Feeding off the dormant anger at the sacrifices that she had made, swallowing her own insecurities, her jealousy, Zura stopped laughing as much as she did when they first met. Sometimes she just wanted to turn off the music and yell foul names at the girls around her boyfriend, to tell them to go home or pull someone else's boyfriend. She hated it, absolutely hated it. But they'd only been going out for a few months, and already he could make her feel things with such extremity. At the same time she felt she had no right to feel like that, that he was free to behave as he wanted if he was having fun, and at the same time incensed that she thought that, felt like that, incensed that actually maybe that wasn't true. They were embarking on a relationship together. If he didn't feel that it wasn't worth... she didn't even know where that thought led. And already, she didn't like where she thought that thought was going.

Unlike Johnny, she had done this once before. She'd been younger, more trusting. And she had few good memories of her ex-boyfriend, Ryck, wherever he was now, compared to the hundreds of bad memories. It was the only comparison she had, and it didn't feel like a fair one. She'd had to learn to stand up for herself, to make people who she thought might hurt her leave her alone, from her ex, who she didn't even like to think of by name. Johnny, she reminded herself, had gone out and told the world that was watching and listening to back off the morning after they'd had an argument. She and Johnny had both gone out and tried to find each other after meeting by chance, had wanted to meet again. She and her ex had just fallen into their relationship after high school, after hooking up at too many drunken parties until they didn't have an excuse not to start seeing each other. Stupidly, she'd thought at the time that they just couldn't help themselves, like it was romantic. What wasn't romantic was the little effort he'd put in to get into their relationship and subsequently stay in it. He made an effort to see her after she decided she'd had enough of feeling unhappy with him.

One of her friends, returned from Harvard on scholarship, now some big shot in the city, invited her out to Ibiza for the summer to move on. On her first day on the beach she started sobbing because she was so far from home, and from her ex, and thus all her bad memories of him. A man in his early forties, a gay British ex-patriot, stopped and sat with her, listened as she poured her twenty-one year old heart out. He told her about the worst relationships he'd ever been in when he was her age, after he was her age, sharing bad memories. He unexpectedly shared better memories too, of relationships that had gone their course and ended, but that he looked back on well. Unlike her friends that she was with, who knew her ex far too well, this stranger, Nigel, had never met him. It was refreshing, being able to explain everything from her perspective, and not have a biased perspective returned to her. And he still thought he wasn't worth the tears. The time she'd wasted however, and so the things she could have done then, was definitely worth being upset about. They parted acquaintances, no longer strangers.

She bumped into him in Ibiza's clubs, realising only then that he was a resident DJ, and she learnt how to mix music from him. He recommended the best places to her, both on and off the beaten track. He took her to the tattoo parlour to have the phoenix done, and he'd put some headphones over her ears and played her his best stuff to drown out the pain of the needle. For a month, her best friend was a stranger she would not have met in any other corner of the world but there. On her last night on the island before flying back to her Mom's, he gave her his phone number, and told her to never ring it except to tell him she was returning to Ibiza, and so when to expect to play her that summer's tracks.

She kept her word. She got back to Queens, and got a new job at Barnes and Noble in Manhattan, and moved out. She saved up and bought a Mac with decent enough specs to practice mixing music on from her apartment. And when her friend invited her to Ibiza again, she called Nigel. His solicitor picked up to tell her that he had died, and had left his decks and music to her. She pieced together the last of his latest works, fine tuned them a little bit, hoping that he'd like her twists, and gave them to the club that he said he liked working at the most. The money she got from it paid the cost of shipping his decks back to the States, and set her up a bit for rainy days to come.

It was whilst she sat under melancholy at those same decks in her apartment, remembering how she had gotten to where she was now, that, at the six month mark, Johnny addressed things himself. He had a key, let himself in, wrapped his arms round her familiarly, smiling at the smell of her laundry softener in her dressing gown. Sighed with relief when she accepted him in.

"Could you do me a favour?" He asked, and, before she could answer, picked up her right hand and slipped a ring on to her ring finger. She stared at it, shocked. Then she squinted at it. A seemingly simple silver band, but streaking through it, unmistakably, was a man aflame.

"It's not an engagement ring, in case you were thinking that," Johnny pointed out quickly, almost too quickly. But she was too stunned to care at the glimmer of the commitment-phobe in him. "But... well, I guess it's not that far from being one anyway." He fidgeted nervously. She hadn't seen him nervous in a long while. "I know you don't like it when girls hit on me. And I don't want you to be unhappy because of that. I'd just rather it not happen, so it can't upset you. So, if having a ring on my finger," and he waved his own ring on his own right hand, magpie in flight across it cut into the metal, "keeps them away, then that's what I want." He reached in and kissed her gently, taking away the shock a bit. "Consider that my promise to you, okay?"

She just carried on staring at him. She wanted to cry. Ryck had never bothered to do this, would never have thought to have done this. As that thought flashed through her mind like a lightning bolt, Johnny wrapped his arms round her, already predicting the tears that started pouring down her face as she struggled for breath against his chest. He rocked her gently, hoping to God that things would get easier now.

As she calmed a seemingly trivial thought occurred to her. "Won't yours melt when you flame up?"

He grinned, shook his head, looked down at his own ring. "Nope, got them made specially; adamantium, some alloy that's über strong. Definitely not losing this one." He stroked her hair back, carefully rubbed her cheeks clear. "You get guys looking at you, you know. Sucks for me too."

She wrapped her arms tighter round his middle, rested her head in the crook of his neck. "At least they don't hit on me."

He sighed. "No, they do, they're just more subtle than I am."

The rings actually worked a lot of the time. The media absolutely loved it, even though they did ask 'when's the wedding?' a lot, which Johnny always found uncomfortable. But he never corrected them, and slowly as the news spread that Johnny Storm was spoken for, attached, complete with upcoming ball and chain, the droves of hot girls started leaving him alone. The ones that still didn't get the hint were clearly so loopy Zura just felt sorry for them. The most noticeable dip was when photos of Johnny meeting Zura's mother, Ceará Braith, who, Zura had told him when they first met, had given so much advice to keep troublesome boys away. Turned out that Zura got her shyness from her mother, making Johnny wonder who the 'once in the nose, once in the nuts' advice really came from.

One day she'd tell him what she learnt at twenty one on the other side of the Atlantic: that parents can't prepare you for matters of the heart. The best they could do was maybe set a good example. It was from strangers that you learnt how to deal with heartbreak.

* * *

_It's all about the newfound..._

* * *

Life continued. The Fantastic Four saved the world again and again, from those who wished to dominate it or destroy it altogether, even those too insane to know which one they wanted to do. And from the spectator line, Zura stood, waiting with bated breath, describing everything that was happening to Alicia. Zura wasn't sure who had it worse: she who could see everything, or Alicia who couldn't see a thing. After it all she'd do the cliché thing of pushing through the crowd to get to his arms. Back home, she'd do the un-cliché thing of trying not to cry. It was hard, really hard, watching her boyfriend risk his life time and again, hoping that he'd make it home safe. The worst when the fights were brutal, and she started to doubt that he would make it okay.

Once the fight took so much out of him she almost had to carry him to the Fantasticar, drive the Fantastic Four to the Baxter Building because they didn't have the strength to do it themselves. She sat Johnny down on the couch, cleaned up every cut, even put aloe on burns on his hands, having gotten so hot his body had reached the limit of what it could tolerate. When she finally burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably, he never hugged her so tightly. They talked. It was hard for him too, having his confidence broken to the point where he worried he wouldn't be able to save her along with the world, wouldn't be able to see her again if this was his last fight.

Not every time that he suited up was so bad though. One chilly morning Johnny woke up lazily, groaning because he couldn't be bothered to get up. And why should he? His girlfriend was tucked up with him, pyjama-less, sheets ruffled up down around her lower back, his chest acting as her pillow. He smiled contentedly, enjoying the view, and ran his fingers lightly down her smooth, exposed back. He spotted the twitch in the corner of her mouth, telling him she was awake. "Cold?"

She shuffled up even closer. "With the Human Radiator on? No chance."

He grinned, kissed the top of her head. "Want to do something today?"

He felt her cheeks expand as she smiled against his skin. "That would be nice. Have anything in mind?"

He smirked, ran his fingers down her back slowly, seductively. "Oh, I always have _something_ in mind..." She slapped his middle playfully as he chuckled teasingly. "I don't mind, anything you'd like to do?"

She lifted up her head, rested her chin on his chest. "It would be nice to get out of the city. Maybe the beach, just walk on the sand."

"We could fly out to the Keys..."

She rolled her eyes. "We don't need to go that far! I was thinking more like Montauk."

"Okay. Can I drive?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Only if you promise to not make me car-sick again."

Johnny started chuckling, remembering how fast he'd gotten the Fantasticar to go until she'd begged him to slow down, until the door practically exploded inwards.

In the second after, Zura snapped her head to the door and froze at the sight of Ben, who froze equally at the sight of her half sprawled, naked, across her equally naked boyfriend. In the same second, Johnny reacted instinctively, grabbing the sheet and pulling it up quickly around her, yelling at Ben. "Knock first much?!"

Ben, still somewhat stunned by the glimpse of the outline of Zura's curves, stammered a response. "Yeah, I... I did, but I knocked too hard..." He shook his head and focused. "Johnny, we need you, some 'tard is threatening to jump off the Empire State with his dog, apparently he'll only speak to us."

By this point, this wasn't outside the realms of normalcy. Although... "With his dog?" Zura asked.

Ben shrugged. "Yeah, apparently he bought a puppy for his son, I dunno..."

Johnny sighed. "Okay, fine. Just give me a minute, okay?" And, after an awkward moment where no one moved and everyone stared at each other awkwardly, he gestured to the door. After Ben left, he collapsed back against his pillow, groaning.

Zura sat up, wrapped the sheets around herself, over her shoulders like a cocoon. "Poor dog."

He smiled, sat up again. "I'll take you out to Montauk after, okay?" She nodded easily. He kissed her slowly, savouring the minute he'd bought. "Don't worry about this one. Just go have breakfast, have a shower, I'll be back before you know it. I'll make sure the dog gets taken care of," he teased. He then grinned at the sight of her, with her messy blue hair and brown roots showing, sleep still in her eyes, wrapped up to her chin. "I love you."

Her eyes widened a little, and then she just grinned back. "I love you too."

That was the first time they'd ever said it out loud to each other. Turned out the poor man threatening to jump had had a severe mental breakdown after his marriage had collapsed and ended, the first of a domino effect that had brought him to the top of the Empire State Building, hoping that if the Fantastic Four thought that his life was worth saving, then he was worth another chance from his ex-wife, and his two-year old son. Johnny watched as Reed told the guy that the only person who could fix his life was himself, and talked him down. Suffice it to say, the man was in custody, and the dog - a labrador puppy as cute as out of toilet roll ads - sat around waiting for his fate to be decided for it. The son couldn't take it; he was allergic.

So the puppy went with Johnny and Zura to Montauk, tail wagging as he stuck his head out the car into the wind as Zura laughed as Johnny copied him. When they got it back to the Baxter Building, wondering whether or not to keep it, the puppy clambered up on to Ben, frozen with uncertainty, and started licking his face, wagging its tail, making Ben chuckle with surprised delight. "Awe, ain't that cute?"

"See? We've got to keep him now, he even likes the Boulder!" Johnny argued with the reluctant cop who'd been sent to retrieve the dog.

Despite the fact that Johnny, of course, hadn't been referring to the dog with the name, Zura liked the idea of it, and Boulder the labrador moved to her apartment.

Summer became fall, fall became winter. In silent agreement that New York City in the winter was too cold, the bad guys - for the most part - hibernated. So many evil plans rest on having good weather. Sue started to see less and less of her brother, or when she saw him Zura, or Maggie as he called her - "Magpie, Maggie" - was there too. Her jobs made her verging on nocturnal, so she woke late, fed Boulder and took him for long walks in Central Park, went to her evening street-dancing classes, fed Boulder again, went to work late, got back late, went to sleep late, so when she was working Johnny stayed at her apartment. When she wasn't, they stayed at the Baxter Building, sleeping under summer sheets as Johnny kept them warm through the night, Boulder sleeping in his basket in the corner. The nights they spent apart became fewer and far between.

When Ben and Alicia got married, Zura was, without even needing to ask, Johnny's plus one. Whilst Johnny happily Armani-ed up, she reluctantly put on her bridesmaid dress and heels, and begged Johnny to burn the shoes the moment she took them off, having offended her feet so much. When the happy bride threw the bouquet, Zura stayed at his side, interested only in who actually caught it, rather than being amongst the group of women hoping to catch it themselves.

He asked her whether she actually wanted to join them, rather than appease him. She looked at him funnily. "Johnny, if we get married, I'd rather it be in our time, rather than _next_ time."

* * *

_We are the newborn..._

* * *

Not long after Johnny sat Reed down for what was clearly going to be a serious, grown up conversation. Reed had no idea what to do with himself.

"We've been talking about moving in together," Johnny told him. At Reed's blank expression, he explained a little further to the smartest dumb guy he knew. "Y'know, Maggie and I."

"Oh... okay..." Reed smiled. "Good for you, Johnny."

Johnny shrugged. "We've been trying to figure out what to do. I mean, her apartment's nice, but it's kinda small, particularly for both her and the dog, and it's a bit far out from here. Even though you and Sue, and Ben and Alicia are doing your whole married-thing here, we're still a team. When shit goes down, it works better that we're all here, y'know? So..."

Reed frowned at him, not following. "So...?"

"Well, the building's yours now, right?" Reed nodded; saved being evicted because of Ben's stomping, the repeated attacks, minor explosions when his experiments went wrong, and, before, Johnny's parties. "You and Sue are in the floor below, and I know Ben and Alicia are thinking of moving into the floor below you guys. I was wondering whether we could have that floor instead, and Ben could take the floor below _us_. 'Cos no one wants to be living underneath Ben, we'd be worrying that he'd fall through the ceiling anytime."

"Just 'cos I don't have ears doesn't mean I can't hear you, jackass!"

The two men ignored Ben, shouting from across the penthouse, and Reed sat forward. "Are you sure Azura wants this?"

Johnny looked at him patiently. "We talked about it. She's been wanting to move out of her place for a while, now that's she's focusing on her music it's too small for her with all her kit, and there's no point in getting our own place if this is where I need to be." He shrugged. "Unless there's something she's not telling me, and I don't think there is, she doesn't mind. Besides, she likes you guys. Even Termite Mound guy."

"Oi!"

Johnny tried, and failed, to conceal his grin, and then sobered as he said, "Reed, I can't sleep the nights she's not here, or I'm not at hers." He shrugged helplessly. "I always feel like a kid that doesn't have his teddy bear with him. It just doesn't feel right any more."

Reed smiled understandingly. It wasn't the analogy he'd give, but he knew the feeling very well. "You know that floor's a wreck, right?"

Johnny just grinned. "Well, I had some design ideas..."

Reed raised an eyebrow. "Johnny, I'm not paying for a state of the art TV so you can watch games from a jacuzzi."

Johnny looked at him like he was insane. "Who said you had to?" Reed's turn to look at him like he was insane. "We just got sponsored by Adidas. They can pay for it."

Reed groaned. "Johnny, we're not wearing new uniforms with Adidas stripes on them..."

Again, Johnny looked at him like he was insane. "Not you, Maggie and I. She's the new face of their new street clothing line-up. You'll see the billboards soon enough."

Sure enough, as the renovation began on the Baxter Building, Reed stepped outside one day and saw Azura's face plastered up for the world to see. She was standing at her decks, grinning down, blue hair flying, one hand spinning a record, old-school, and the other was pointing up in the air to the unheard music she was playing. All her clothing was clearly branded and striped, from the crop top and the unzipped jacket she wore over it, but most notably the arm up she had a wristband with Adidas' logo, bold and clear, and on the other was a dark blue wrist band, Fantastic Four's own logo burning its outline. _Till the sun comes up_, the tag line read. When Reed asked her what changed her mind about being media shy, she just blushed sheepishly. "They put a lot of zeros on the cheque. And they redid my hair for the photo-shoot, the roots were starting to show. They gave me my own sneakers. I actually really like them, they're black and blue."

Reed, Sue and Ben were, for the most part, banished from Johnny's new floor during its transformation, making them all the more worried when new trucks would turn up with furniture, appliances and technology wrapped up, hidden. They had a collective picture of disco lights and over-loud speakers to make the building shake, the aforementioned jacuzzi and wall-sized TV. That Johnny would forget things like a kitchen. Eventually they caved and begged Zura to tell them what Johnny was building as their future home, and she laughed and laughed when they told her what they dreaded. She teased them at first, telling them the jacuzzi had expanded to a full-sized pool, and that the bass of the speakers would deafen all of New York. State, not city, she teased. She was just as bad as he was.

Then she relented, giggling, and snuck them downstairs. "It's almost finished, just need to paint the walls, but we can't decide on the colours yet," she told them as she typed in the code to the front door, and then pushed them open.

They were speechless.

Maybe it was just the lack of colour to finish it off, but for the youngest member of the Fantastic Four, the new apartment was... well, normal. A lot of it was open plan, or, like Reed's laboratory on the top floor, just had glass walls. The kitchen, evidently remembered, was big, spacious and light, everything in chrome so Johnny couldn't accidentally set anything on fire. In fact, a lot of the apartment had clearly been designed with that potential in mind. There was very little that Johnny could set alight with ease, except maybe the sofa covers. There were fire extinguishers everywhere. In the corner was a studio, fully set up for Zura to work in, the only corner of the apartment that didn't have windows, and instead had sound-proofing over the wall. And, right by the view of Manhattan, was Boulder's basket, so he could watch helicopters.

"All the glass is triple-glazed by the way," Zura told them. "I'm probably going to have my headphones on most of the time, but in case I need to test it out loud, so to speak, you shouldn't hear too much." She grinned at them. "And sorry to disappoint, but there's no pool, no jacuzzi. The bath tub's pretty big though."

It was the most anti-climactic Johnny had ever been in his life. The finished product looked more like their home though: half a wall dedicated itself loudly to Fantastic Four mementoes; newspaper clippings, photographs, all stuck to the wall. Some of it was just Johnny, or his alter ego the Human Torch, but most of it was about the team, spanning the years since their fateful trip to Von Doom's space-station. The other half was for Zura; her flyer, with her cell phone number, was in pride of place in the centre, surrounded by more flyers from so many other events she'd enjoyed doing, photos of her gigs, promotional work from Adidas. In between were photos of the two of them, taken by family and friends, or ones they actually liked and didn't mind from fans. Throughout the apartment were more framed photos of the two of them, or photos of their families. Sue's moving in gift was a framed collection of photos of them as kids, which Zura had cooed over and insisted on hanging up, to Johnny's annoyance. Even more to his annoyance, Reed had designed the frame so it wouldn't melt if Johnny tried to get rid of it. No matter how hard he tried before Zura told him to stop it.

* * *

_Day by day, soon the change will come..._

* * *

Life continued still. Zura introduced Johnny to laundry and washing up liquid, ending a long argument that he was a lazy ass who never helped out around the house. He melted marshmallows with his fingers to make s'mores when they stayed in. He even picked up after Boulder when he took him for walks in Central Park. She made a mix tape of his favourite rock bands, blending the tracks together to get rid of the pauses between each one. He went out and saved the world. She launched her career as a music producer from their apartment, releasing her first album of original work, _Black Tempest_, leading to a tour across Europe, where it was most successful, no doubt thanks to its Ibiza influences. Every gig, provided the world wasn't about to end, Johnny went to with her, or joined her as soon as he could, even if he had to fly himself.

Then, after nine months of being the Fantastic Three, Johnny became an uncle.

On what had started out as an ordinary day, Johnny found himself in a hospital waiting room for several hours, Zura holding his hand to keep him patient. It was the end of a long couple of years. Due to their unique condition, trying to figure out exactly what to expect if they were going to have children - whether they'd have superpowers too, or whether their DNA was so cooked it wasn't capable of producing even a healthy, normal baby - Sue and Reed's attempts to conceive had dragged both Ben and Johnny into the mix. Johnny had told Zura it felt even more weird than having his invisible sister strip off her clothes on the Brooklyn Bridge, given that he'd had to do exactly what he'd have to do if he visited an actual fertility clinic, except this was so his sister could have kids. She'd laughed, but nonetheless had been curious. What kind of kids was he capable of producing?

Answer: Reed had no idea. No amount of tests gave him definitive answers. All he ended up gleaning was that it had taken a tiny fraction of a chance for them to survive the cloud in the first place.

When Sue actually got pregnant, Reed's hair started to get grayer at the edges. Sue was almost constantly worried about using her powers, worried that turning invisible would affect the baby. No amount of whale music, or Mozart for the baby bump, put their minds at rest. But the baby's heartbeat remained steady and healthy, nothing out of the ordinary, at every stage. If they had been normal parents, it would have been one of the easiest pregnancies. But of course they weren't normal. They were still superheroes, but now Sue got to watch from the sidelines too, both Alicia and Zura holding her hands to stop her from joining the fight. Given that it was all over the news, one would think that the bad guys would show some manners and cool it during her 'fragile state', as the headlines put it to explain her absence from the team. But no such luck.

In a way it wasn't just the women waiting at the sidelines. Both Ben and Johnny had a lot of hope riding on this, though neither voiced as much to Reed, knowing that the man was under enough stress as it was. Reed knew anyway, knew what it meant to everyone. Ben was hoping that this could mean that he and Alicia could one day have kids who weren't boulders like him. For Johnny, it was about having that option at least. Or at least the reassurance that if he ever got Zura pregnant, happy accident or otherwise, it wouldn't incinerate her from the inside. Morbid thought aside, he was still young and boyish, and too happy with his lifestyle to throw having children into the mix. He was grown up enough to know that the kids would win over partying. He knew that Zura wanted to see what would happen with her music, see if she could avoid being a fad and have a career that would last as long as she wanted it to, that having kids wasn't what she foresaw on the horizon yet. But he did know it was a question of 'yet', not 'never'. He also knew that for him, it wasn't a question of 'never' for him any more either.

It was worth it in the end. Reed finally came out to the waiting room, exhausted too from the longest day of his life, and asked Johnny if he wanted to meet his nephew, Franklin.

Franklin didn't know it, might never really appreciate it, but he changed everything for the Fantastic Four. Reed started living up to his superhero name, becoming as flexible as he humanly could be to defeat all conventions of stay-at-home-moms and go-to-work-dads. Sue, having gone through the lengthy process of hoping that she'd have kids, desperately tried not to now be overprotective, to not put forcefields around every little thing that could harm her little boy. And then when the world was threatened yet again, Zura and Alicia, on the sidelines, became child-minders too, distracting the baby whilst Mommy and Daddy fought the baddies just out the window. Ben, now that he had evidence that it was possible to start a family, started seriously thinking about having one. And Johnny, who used to say "babies, yuck", absolutely adored his nephew, loved spoiling him rotten. He made him his own super-baby costume. Franklin's first laugh was at Johnny accidentally burning his teddy bear. The only thing that cooled his adoration slightly was when Franklin threw up over his Hugo Boss t-shirt, but he got over that, having made him sick in the first place by bouncing him up and down. Zura produced some lullabies for him - or, more accurately, for his parents - to put him to sleep. She told Johnny it was the hardest project she'd ever done, figuring out how to make music that dulled the senses rather than hyped them up. But Johnny made a good test subject, as hyperactive as he was. If it worked on him, it would work on the baby of superheroes.

And that was all long before any of them found out he had powers far more extraordinary than his parents, uncle or godfather.

Once, as Reed tried to get his infant son to stop crying, at a loss for what Franklin wanted, he turned to Johnny and asked him whether he ever missed his single days. Johnny looked at him surprisingly shrewdly, as though to ask who was really being asked that, and looked over his shoulder to Zura, helping Sue make dinner in the kitchen. "Bro, _that's_ my girlfriend. I get to go home with _her_ every night. No, I don't miss it."

* * *

_We took a big step forward..._

* * *

Then, on another normal day, a long way since they'd met, Johnny found himself approaching his thirtieth birthday, and realised that it was about time to grow up, having gotten too old to be a giant kid still. He and Zura were walking down the block, discussing a movie they'd just been to, what to have for dinner, hand in hand. Gone were the days when they would have been mobbed by adoring fans clamouring for autographs or to just touch the Human Torch. A few people stopped and stared, mostly tourists, but the Fantastic Four had become part of New York City. Not exactly a fad that was over, but the initial excitement had died down. Besides, Johnny wasn't quite the exhibitionist he used to be.

They walked past City Hall, and the sight of the building in the corner of his eye stopped Johnny in his tracks. Zura stopped too, a few steps ahead of him, frowned worryingly at him. He looked up at the building, then back down at her.

She'd changed over the years. Not by much, not so much that she wasn't the same young woman that he'd met years ago, but she had. At first sight the blue in her hair had almost grown out, and had returned to its natural, so dark it was almost black shade, and grown it out as Johnny got a little more control and stopped burning everything he touched. These days she just had blue tips that she spiked up when she was performing. The constant dying had started ruining her hair, so she'd stopped, and now it looked and felt healthy again, save for the ends that she was reluctant to get rid of completely. She was starting to get smile lines around her eyes, coming earlier than they ought from the late nights she still did.

But there was more than what appeared to the eye. He still remembered how distrusting she'd been when they met, how she'd cut him off with their drinks-switch, how unnerved she'd felt trying to compete against women who were, by modern standards, extremely attractive; size zero by eating nothing when she didn't calorie count, wearing make-up so thick one could no longer guess the actual colour of their skin whilst she just quickly put on some concealer and eyeliner to conceal the odd zit and the shadows under her eyes from the late nights. Back then her lack of concealment for who she was had been a defiance, almost like a dare for people to like her as she was. Now she was wearing nothing but some lip balm because her lips were dry, and she greeted everyone new with ease. Happiness had made her more confident. Happiness made her just be.

Knowing that made him prouder of himself than anything he'd ever done in his life, including everything he did for the Fantastic Four. He made her happy. He couldn't really say he'd ever made anyone happy like that.

He smiled, happily, and tugged her closer, so no one passing could hear what he was about to say.

"I can't imagine my life without you any more."

She grinned slowly, touched. "Love you too."

He wanted to grin back, but he was actually being very serious for once. "I know we haven't really talked about it, but... if we were to get married, what kind of wedding do you want?"

She stared at him, stunned. "I... Jesus, Johnny, I... I don't know..." She took a deep breath, thought as calmly as she could. "I guess... when I was younger, when I was a kid I... dressed up my Barbies with white dresses, used Mom's white handkerchiefs for veils and had them walk down the aisle with Ken like a rehearsal. But..." She moved a little closer, to reveal a secret. "I really don't like wearing big dresses. I'd get hay-fever from the flowers. I _hate_ heels. They're uncomfortable, why would I want to spend a day unable to walk properly?" They both grinned. She hadn't told him anything new by this point. "I guess I just want to go to City... Hall..." She looked up at the building they were standing in front of, and stared back at him. "Did you plan this?" She asked, curiously.

He shook his head, honestly. "No. I've been thinking about it a bit, so I figured I'd bring it up, as we're here." He squeezed her hand. "Just... when I think about it, I imagine all the things I know neither of us want. I don't want to do what Sue and Reed did, which was failed to get married four times. I kinda figured that you don't want it to be a media circus, so low-key, top-secret. The only way I can think of making that happen is spur-of-the-moment, no appointments, nothing to set the hounds on our scent. But... It's a wedding. We're only meant to do it once, it's meant to be special. A lot of girls want that fairy-tale wedding. So if that's what you want, then I'd do everything I could to make sure you get to have that the way you want it to be."

She wrapped her arms round him, touched. "You really have been thinking about this, haven't you?" He smiled happily down at her, nodded. "I have thought about it, about us getting married. About weddings. When I went with Alicia for dress fittings... there were some nice ones there. But..." She sighed, her resolve building. "I kinda mean it actually. I don't care about the fairy-tale wedding. I just want to _be married_." She suddenly grinned teasingly. "And plan a really, _really_ great honeymoon."

He grinned too, liking her idea. "Want to do it today, or come back another time?"

Ever practical, Zura looked at her watch. "What are the others doing today?"

"Nothing much, I think. Nothing important anyway."

"We can try to do it today. We might want to walk round the block and come back though, we've been standing here for a bit, people will notice."

He nodded, leant down and kissed her softly. "Shall I make it official? Get down on one knee?" He teased.

She softly batted his arm. "I think that would defeat the object of keeping it quiet, it would be trending online within a minute."

"Still." He didn't get down on one knee, but he did lean in so absolutely no one but her heard him. "Azura Braith, will you marry me?"

Zura's eyes teared up. "Yes..." She kissed him back, and gasped. "Oh my God, we're actually doing this!" But her smile didn't falter. The tears were joy, nothing more, nothing less.

He took her hand, grinning, and led her round the block for a minute, and then doubled back and snuck in quickly. A few phone calls later, and they had everyone they needed; Reed, Sue, Franklin and Boulder picked up Ceará Braith from Queens in a family car, rather than the attention-drawing Fantasticar or Johnny's Porsche, and Ben and Alicia made their way separately on the subway. All of them did as they were told, and came in jeans and sweatshirts, casual things, comfortable things. Zura forbade her Mom from wearing a hat. Zura wore a jacket she'd had since she was in her late teens - something old, her Adidas sneakers - something new. Sue lent her a hair clip - something borrowed - to tidy up her hair quickly in the ladies' - something blue. Then an official read out that which he was vested in by the state of New York, and Johnny and Zura switched their commitment rings from their right hands to their left, as Franklin started crying because no one was paying him any attention, and Ben hiccoughed all the way through.

By the time the press got wind of it, they had already booked their flights - first class, Johnny still didn't fly coach - and were packing to get out of the city. They read all about it from their villa in Bali. _Jonathan 'Johnny' Storm, aka the Human Torch, a founding member of the Fantastic Four, and one of the city's most popular bachelors, is rumoured to have married his long-term girlfriend Azura Braith, aka DJ Magpie, music producer and face of Adidas' latest street collection, at New York City's city hall..._

And so the boy who fried his sister's bouquet at her final wedding to escape getting remotely tied down finally grew up. Sort of.

"Johnny, I know you've always wanted to do this, but I'm really not sure this is a very good idea..."

"I know, but... how bad could it be?"

"This might actually kill you."

"It might not...?"

"Johnny, we're on our honeymoon. Please get down from there."

"But Maggie, seriously, how cool would it be?"

"It's molten rock. Even if you survive diving into the volcano, it's probably gonna feel gross. Really gross."

"You're putting me off this now..."

"That was kind of the point... Please, it's not worth it. Let's go back to our room, I promise I'll make _that_ worth it."

And, now to be ever a good husband, he obeyed.

* * *

_We've come a long way since that day  
__And we would never look back at the faded silhouette_

* * *

"... fast forward..."

Johnny took a swig from the vodka bottle they were sharing, taking a break from the last song he'd bounced up and down to, his arm round her shoulders, hers round her back. "Hey, it's your tune!"

Zura grinned, not refuting his claim. "... we have a beaten path before us..."

Johnny laughed and cheered as she carried on singing, tipsily, and lined up his shot. He started as Zura wrapped her arms round his middle from behind him. "Come on people, we have all seen the signs..." she whispered, almost huskily, into his ear as he grinned, relaxed back against her until her chin slid over his shoulder blade. He took a hand off his club to hold her entwined hands over his abs, and shot with his free hand. The ball just - _just_ - made it into the windmill and made it out on the other side, verging away from the hole so close to her own ball.

Zura grinned against his back and patted his shoulder commiseratively and stepped forward to take her own shot. Her ball was only a couple of inches away. "... And we may never get back to -"

"Oh no you don't!" Johnny grabbed her round her own middle and lifted her right off her feet, making her shriek with laughter, both whacking his arm and gripping it to not fall, and screamed more as he spun them both round, round and round until she was so dizzy and laughing so much her head lolled back, bending over his shoulder, exposing her neck to him. He stopped turning, and pressed his face into that stretch of skin, feeling her pulse against his closed eyes, smelt her perfume. Her breath hitched, but she didn't make him let her go, or stop breathing - just _breathing_ - against the sensitives nerves in her neck. He slowly set her back on the ground, but didn't let her go.

Her iPod kept playing Avicii.

"Can I take my shot now?" She asked, her voice trembling a little, turning her head slightly towards his. She was breathing heavily, making her chest rise and fall more than it ought. He smiled, nodded ever so slightly, and, without letting her go in the slightest, walked her over to her shot. Helped her line up, like a cliche, and chuckled as it went wide.

"Cheat," she teased. He just grinned into her skin. She lifted her golf club and lightly tapped the other side of his head with its handle. "Told you my Mom's rule stands."

"What other rules does your Mom have?" Johnny asked, still nuzzling her skin, his hands starting to clench at her sides.

She tried not to moan, let a wobbly arm reach up so she could tread her fingers through his hair to keep him exactly where he was. "That if you're going to go home with a stranger..." She trailed her fingers out of his hair, down his cheek, gently pulling his head to face her. "... Do it sober."

He started to smirk, thinking she meant one thing, one _good_ thing, and then he frowned as sense caught up with him. She'd been leaning on him for the past minute, not just because he was warm and it felt undeniably good, but because she wouldn't be able to stand straight. Her face was turning pale, and she was still breathing heavily, but like she was controlling it, trying to rein in rebelling innards. He shouldn't have spun her around so much; it had spiralled the cider and vodka straight up to her head, and crashed down to swirl uncomfortably in her stomach.

It was sobering. He let her go slowly, kept his hand on her shoulder as she swayed uncomfortably. "You okay?"

She nodded slowly, and then sat down on the course, lay back on the cool green, closed her eyes and breathed calmly. Johnny watched her for an awkward moment, and then shrugged and jumped down next to her, facing the other way, leaning up on his elbow. She opened her eyes, looked down at him. "Ugh," she moaned pitifully, and let her head fall back, making him grin. He smiled sympathetically, reached out to stroke her shin through her jeans. He saw a smile flitter over her face. "I concede; you win," she told him, and pushed her golf ball away from them. "Even though you cheated."

He laughed out loud, glad to see her chest rumble with laughter too. "We'll have to have a rematch sometime."

She looked across at him again. She wasn't so drunk that she didn't know he was asking her out, just too sick to sit up properly. She lay back again, stared at the stars, and smiled to herself. "As long as you play fair and square."

He chuckled again. They fell to silence; Johnny just watched as Zura breathed in and out, trying to stop her head and stomach spinning. He just knew that he would remember this moment for the rest of his life, if only for her softly singing, all inhibition gone, all shame and embarrassment forgotten. He would remember her pink cheeks, her breath misting on the air, her hair messily pillowing around her head, the rise and fall of her chest. He would remember it, even if the lyrics turned out to be false.

Johnny Storm began to fall in love for the first time, for the only time, for the best time, as Azura Braith sang: "... We are the future and we are here to stay..."

* * *

**And now I'm done :-) ****For recognition of copyrights, see Part I: they all apply here too.**

**Well, folks, it's been my pleasure to write this; I hope it has been your pleasure to read it. If it has been so, I also hope that you'll let me know, and even better than that, that you'll let me know why it was. It would be my pleasure to write back and thank you for it; it gives me another chance to ramble about my fanfiction.**

**Otherwise, I wish you all very well x**


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